Page 13 of A Shot in the Dark (Fated Mates Collection | Triple Threat #1)
“ S it,” he commands, and I do. “We should have a little time now with them out cold and you back inside. Shit . Thank god I didn’t need to draw the gun…
” He mumbles something like, “Only temporary… Got no fucking choice…” as he takes off his coat, folding it in half with military precision before setting it gently on the back of the room’s second chair.
His fingers start to work the buttons of his vest open and I can’t help but gawk.
“You said the uniform stays on…”
He heaves out a sigh. “Yeah.”
“It’s in the ground rules.”
“Yeah,” he says, a certain resignation to the word. “Unfortunately, today’s little bathroom break and getting attacked by your random and would-be rapists has made an unfortunate aspect of our situation obvious. You’re in a precarious situation, princess, whether you know it or not.”
“I know it.” I roll my eyes. “I have a fucking stalker.”
He snorts. “Yeah, a few days difference and you would’ve definitely had a fucking stalker…” He shakes his head. “I’m not dropping you off anywhere when you’re like this. It wouldn’t be right. You’re not?—”
“—myself.”
His shoulders slump. “Yeah,” the word tumbles out of him.
“I’m royally fucked.” He throws back his head and laughs.
“Jesus—literally royally fucked. I can’t kill you, I can’t deliver you, but I also can’t be on guard 24/7.
A man’s gotta sleep. So I need to take a different tack—engage a new strategy. Huntsman Protocol be damned.”
“Huntsman Protocol?” I remember the phone call I overheard. Other than that, I’ve only heard “huntsman” used in fairy and folk tales. Like Snow White.
The huntsman didn’t start as her protector…
“Fuck. Forget I said that. Getting sloppy.” He flexes his hand and winces. “Forgot how much it hurts to punch a kindred.”
“Kindred?”
“ Fuck ,” he repeats.
“Forget you said that too?”
He slides out of his vest, folds it just as neatly and sets it on top of his coat, saying, “Please.”
Even as I’m scrambling out of my skirt, the single word hits me. “Please?” I wonder aloud, awed. “I didn’t know please was part of your vocabulary…”
“ Shit . I’m going on too many hours without sleep, princess. Back in training and on operations that was to be expected, but I’m just a driver now. I’m not perfect.” He rubs his face. “I need to mark you. To make you—for all appearances to the wild bits of those men with wild in them—mine.”
Before I can get a word out, he holds up his hand to silence me, wincing as he does.
“However, because of…circumstances…it can only be temporary. That’s perfect because this is only meant to be temporary.”
I feel my eyebrows tug together. “I want to understand.”
“No,” he states firmly. “You don’t. My world? It’s not awesome for you. Hell, it’s not awesome for me either. Let’s get this done. Time is of the essence.”
Something in his tone strikes to the core of me. “You really don’t want to do this…”
“It’s complicated,” he murmurs. “It’ll keep you safe for a couple days, and let me get a chance to sleep. Get a smoke break. A shave. Might even tamp down that raging desire in you…” he muses almost sadly.
“So you won’t have to fuck me so much?”
“Yeah…” He sighs. “Maybe. Shit.” He pauses, stares at something in a distance I’m not privy to. “To do this I need your consent.”
“My safe word is—” I begin and he gives a dark chuckle.
“Not this time, princess. I need you to consent to being mine—temporarily.” He takes off his belt.
There’s no sudden and exciting snap in the motion, he just does it the way he’s probably done it almost every day of his life.
The little bit of brow I can see between the top of his glasses and the bottom of his cap’s brim furrows. “Seven days should do the trick.”
I look at him blankly.
“No one’s talked to you about any of this… Have they?”
I blink.
“Who the fuck raised you?” He takes off his cap and runs his hand through short dark hair the color of a moonless night. He places the cap beside the belt on the table.
“After my parents died? I raised myself.”
“Shit. There it is.” His head drops. “Shit. You were telling the truth.”
“Of course I was. I can’t… I can’t lie to you, Boots.”
“You have no one .”
It’s one thing to think it, another to say it. It’s even worse having someone acknowledge how truly alone you are in the universe. The pang in my heart that’s always present like a soft reminder of my loss becomes an open wound and I look away.
“Shit. To be so alone—and not by choice? Shit.” His hand lands lightly on my shoulder and I look up into the face of a man who has suddenly realized he has absolutely no choice.
“That’s not the way things should ever be.
Oh, shit .” He lifts his hands long enough to rub at his eyes.
“Someone needs to protect you—you clearly can’t protect yourself. ”
He glances over his shoulder at the door, and I worry he’s going to spin on his heel and leave the room as fast as he entered.
He shakes his head, seems to steady himself, muttering, “Seven days. I can take it. I can make it work. I can do anything for seven days…” like he’s hyping himself up—but why?
The little bit I know of Boots from the things he’s let slip or that I’ve extracted leads me to believe Boots doesn’t need to hype himself up.
He is fucking amazing.
“What do you mean—you can do anything for seven days?”
He looks up at me, cowed.
“Princess, you don’t want to know. Everything costs something…
And I need to pay a price to keep you safe.
So that’s exactly what I’ll do. Because I can’t leave you all alone.
Shit . If I had known from the start what was being asked of me…
But I didn’t. And I can’t keep you either—no matter how…
used to you… I’ve grown.” He laughs bitterly.
“Regardless of all the perfect gold star-worthy fucking—if I do say so myself—you and I are incompatible in all the ways that matter in my world.”
He sits on the edge of the chair, leaning over to untie the boots he’s the namesake of. So close to pristine with only the faintest scuff mark on each toe. He swipes at the scuff marks with his thumbs, his frustration clear. “I can offer you cover, at least. Play shield. Temporarily.”
“Tell me what I’m consenting to.”
He pauses, gaze pinned to the floor. “Skin-to-skin contact. And a lot of it. The hotter—the sweatier—the better.”
“So far I’m not hearing a reason for me not to consent…”
“I need to make my scent so powerful on you—mark you so thoroughly—that everyone will smell me on you.”
“I’m allowed to still shower, right? Because, although I don’t find your scent entirely unpleasant?—”
“That’s what I’ve always been waiting to hear from a woman.
Somehow I doubt any manufacturer of cologne is going to start selling one called ‘Not Entirely Unpleasant’.
.. Fuck my life. Yeah, princess. You’ll still be able to shower.
” He grunts then looks up at me, fingers on his laces.
“I know you like the boots, but physics requires their removal to take off my pants…”
Sprawled on the bed, watching him while I chew on my lip, I comment, “The traction has been an asset…”
He gives me a smile that I realize now is more tired than anything else.
“...but if physics dictates they need to come off…”
He nods, seeming lost in thought as he tugs one boot off, then another. Peels off his socks.
He stands and begins unbuttoning his shirt, black gloves a sharp contrast to the white fabric.
He looks down, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Also, I need to bite you. On the back of your neck.”
“What, are you some sort of vampire?”
The laugh that comes out of him is sharp and short.
“Hardly.” He lifts his head again, looking at me.
“I won’t bite you hard,” he promises. “More than a nip but…I won’t break skin.
No blood. And I’ll do my best to time it so…
” His lips twist wickedly and for a moment the exhaustion seems to lift. “…it won’t hurt.”
“Ah.” He’s already planning how to time it so I come at just the right moment. “That military precision of yours coming into play. Oo- rah ,” I whisper.
“Wrong branch, princess, but points for trying.”
“It doesn’t matter—I’ll take any points I can get with you.”
He grimaces and looks at his hands. At the gloves. “You like the gloves, too…”
I pad over to him, the scent of him only growing more intoxicating the closer I get. I slip my fingers along his wrist and then remove his gloves slowly, carefully, one finger at a time as he stares at me. “I want to feel your hands all over me.”
His nostrils flare. Realizing there’s actually very little of Boots that I’ve seen, I slip my hands between his warm golden skin and his shirt, sliding it off one arm and then the other as he wrestles to pull mine off.
“I need your consent,” he reminds me, the words thick. “The bite, the bond—seven days—that’s all I’ll ask. All I’ll ever take. I swear.”
“What if I need more than seven?”
His head rolls forward on his neck to hang. “I can’t grant it—I’m not at liberty because of who holds my leash.”
“The masters you mentioned earlier.”
“You actually listen…”
“To every word.” My brow puckers; I wonder at the identity of these people who hold such sway over him, while my fingers track down his chest, pause above his clearly defined abs. “Are these…scars?” Three quarter-sized spots like small full moons mark the skin right below his ribs.
He shrugs. “Missions don’t always go perfectly…”
“And this?” My fingers graze his side, pausing right by two lengthy white stripes, each longer than my hand and as wide as one of my fingers. “More missions gone wrong?”
“In a way.” He catches my wayward hand with his. “Just a little scar tissue—doesn’t hurt any more unless I let it.” He draws my hand up, places my palm flat on his chest. “Focus here.”
“Oh, Boots…”
“Don’t. Don’t try and make this more than it is.”
“I’m not,” I snap. I squeeze my eyes shut.
Right. This is nothing . Only the weirdest roadtrip of my life.
Just another fuck to slow the rush of my blood, cool the heat in my veins.
A temporary way to protect me from something I don’t understand.
He doesn’t even like me, he’s just used to me .
“Fine,” I say as coolly as I can. “I’ll consent, if you take off the glasses. ”
“I am doing this for you—to protect you . How much more does this have to cost me?”
“Glasses.”
“I don’t have to consent to that,” he mutters. “Shit. Why must you be so…”
“Contrary? High-maintenance?”
“Yeah!” he exclaims. “All that?—”
“—and more?”
“Jesus, woman. And if I don’t take off my glasses, where does that leave you? With no protection. Is seeing my eyes really worth your life?”
“We’re about to find out.”
“ Fuck me .”
“I am determined to,” I report. “‘Hard and fast,’” I quote him. “‘Then so slowly you’ll beg me to finish you off.’”
That wicked smile of his unfurls all Cheshire cat. And suddenly I am Alice, tumbling. “But,” I remind him, “I want to see your eyes first. And the lady always gets what she wants.”
The sigh that rushes out of him is fierce. “I…” Another sigh. “Damn it.” He lifts them off, folds them closed, and stands before me, every muscle, joint, and tendon tight, his eyes closed.
The air rushes out of me, seeing the scar that bisects his left eyebrow, narrowly missing his eye, and carves into the uppermost part of his cheek, leaving a star-shaped scar the size of my smallest fingernail. I reach up, my finger hanging in the air just above the scar, wanting to touch it.
Instead I drop my hands to his waistband, stating, “I consent.” Button, zipper, and down with the slacks and boxers all at once, finding his cock already standing at attention. “Military efficiency.”
He laughs; the sound is hollow.
I stare at the fabric pooled on the floor, wondering if a bare Boots can live up to my imagination of what’s beneath the layers. Then, with a sigh, I step back, look up, taking him all in, and I know.
He can.
He does.
And so. much. more.
Holy shit.
The man is magnificent.
A study in perfection.
“Seven days,” I offer.
“That’s my girl,” he answers, and then he opens his eyes and I am lost.
I’ve always been a fan of gold. My bracelets, necklaces, earrings. Gold, gold, gold, like I’m some dragon building a hoard.
Seeing Boots’ startling silvery eyes makes me an instant convert. In a word, they are unworldly. Gold means nothing to me. All I want is to wander, free, in Boots’ sterling stare.